The Immigrant
will become a pessimist eventually
trying to find what’s lost will ransack the house
the overstayed visa the recipe book
the birth certificate the first passport
nowhere to be found
the immigrant will travel
drive with the windows down stop at the rest stops
always in search trying to find more
of what made you leave because nothing can satisfy
the first time around there is something that pushed you out
this is the horrible secret this is the terrible secret
the immigrant always an immigrant there is no returning
Copyright © 2022 by Aline Mello. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 19, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wrote this poem while looking for my first passport and running into mountains of papers and documents that I know, as an immigrant, I need to have saved. I am really interested in the contracts people unknowingly enter into when they migrate from one country to another. In this poem, I explore this one cycle a migrant enters into: when they choose this country; when they choose to stay without official permission; and when they question where home and belonging are, and if that can ever be found again.”
—Aline Mello
Aline Mello
Aline Mello is a Brazilian immigrant writer and the author of More Salt than Diamond (Andrews McMeel, 2022). An Undocupoets Fellow, she is based in Atlanta.